I believe that because of a false article written by Timbercraft back in March of 2018, as a way to try and bring us down and maybe even destroy our company, we have had some challenges with our reputation and a lot of potential sales have dwindled because of this article and it’s visibility on Google. I let it go back in March, not thinking too much of it at the time, and decided to laser-focus on building our company and brand. As of late, the post has climbed the search engine and it is now destroying the credibility of Everywhere and some people are blindly believing it without hearing the other (truthful) side of the story. I asked Doug, the founder of Timbercraft to remove this post multiple times and he has not done so.

Enough is enough and it’s time to set the record straight!

In November of 2017, I approached Timbercraft Tiny Homes with a very unique idea to partner up to build tiny homes and to place them on various properties across the Western United States. I called it “Roam Homes” by Everywhere X Timbercraft. Doug from Timbercraft, really loved the idea and we began discussing collaboratively, the details and implementing ideas on the partnership.

I started bouncing visual ideas of off Doug and showed him previews to our website with the models on it and what the purchasing flow would look like for when someone would place an order. We really put a lot of work into the website to make sure it was a great experience for the customer.

As the partnership got much more serious and we moved towards a launch, I took a trip out to Alabama with my wife and kids to meet with Doug to finalize details of the partnership and come to an agreement. We had two days of meetings in Guntersville, Alabama, discussing all aspects of the partnership. Seemed like an incredible win/win from where we we’re both standing from at the time. I laid out the entire vision for him. What my goals were with the Everywhere brand and tried to understand what his goals we’re for Timbercraft. We had a mutual understanding that this was the perfect fit and we shook hands with excitement to conclude the journey out to Alabama and to kick the partnership off.

We verbally agreed that to start, we would use Doug’s existing designs and modify the aesthetics of the interior and exterior to be unique to Everywhere. This would allow us to get to work quickly and capture the market while we worked towards 3 unique models that would be unique and produced for Everywhere only. Doug had worked on custom ‘Everywhere edition’ models that we would be producing, and we emailed back and forth until we had gotten details right. He also brought me up to speed with all of the costs involved, even sending over Quickbooks files of the financials of Timbercraft and the breakdown of all of the line items. I was pretty excited about how great of a guy and helpful it seemed like Doug was at the time. I really thought it was going to be an incredible partnership. I hadn’t been this excited about something in quite a while!

After I returned home from Alabama, naturally my first order of business was to work on get this partnership promoted so I was brainstorming ideas on how we could do that. One of the final items we needed to work out was the commission that Everywhere would be receiving from the partnership. Doug had proposed something pretty low and it was a bit disheartening but I thought, he is going to be building these things so it’s fine for now. So I was willing to take the low commission and just wanted to make something happen.

I created a Google Doc with a draft of a press release and bounced some ideas off of Doug, letting him know that I was going to send it out in the coming days. The press release mentioned details on the partnership and also linked to a YouTube video that explained more about what we we’re doing.

I made a list of sites I thought we should target and sent the press release out to them, announcing the Timbercraft X Everywhere official partnership. I’ll be the first to say, I learned a lot about the press that day. They take bits and pieces of things and totally misconstrue them in a way that benefits them for more clicks. It’s sad really. Because they got a lot of the story wrong along with certain details as it related to the partnership.

Another learning experience I gained was that you cannot control what the press will do. So Dwell, arguably the most notable home living blog and media brand ended up doing a feature on Everywhere along with other tiny home builders and put us all the way to the top of their article at #1! But this is where things turned negative very quickly.

Obviously, I’m super pumped at the time and we started getting flooded with emails about people wanting to buy a tiny home! I texted and emailed Doug as soon as could and told him how excited I was and that I couldn’t believe the response. I started forwarding him all of the emails of people that we’re interested in buying one. THIS WAS WORKING!! It was an amazing feeling. But with most things that seem to good to be true, this ended up being one of them.

When Doug saw that we we’re number 1 on Dwell and it wasn’t Timbercraft, he was FURIOUS! He called me and left me a very angry voicemail about how he didn’t ever agree to being a partner, yet he told me that we should end the partnership. He pointed out that he was in a meeting with his attorney and that she had actually discovered the Dwell article and relayed the information on to him.

I was dumbfounded!

How could this be? After almost 6 months of planning and prepping it amounts to this? I called Doug back and asked what was going on and all I got we’re lies about how we never even had a partnership to begin with. I was speechless. The partner that I believed in and thought the world of had totally left me hanging because he was upset that the Dwell article had us at the top and not Timbercraft. And that some other blogs wrote false information and that somehow that was my fault.

I couldn’t understand it though. He was making almost all of the profit on these sales and all construction was going to go through him. So it really didn’t make sense to me. On the phone he made a bunch of baseless excuses that didn’t add up. Almost like the advice he was getting was from his attorney and not from his heart. He had told me in the last few days he didn’t really like the partnership before (but he never told me that) and that he wanted to focus more on the Timbercraft brand and didn’t want Everywhere to be a part of it. Again, this was after numerous conversations. Email, texts and a two-day meeting at his facility in Guntersville, Alabama.

A little heads up would have been nice.

The next move he made completely shocked me. I received phone calls and emails from his attorney! His attorney was threatening me with legal action because all of Doug’s models and even his name was on our website! Well of course they were! Why wouldn’t they be after discussing a partnership for almost 6 months? After meeting together in person two days straight and putting a plan in place? Of course Timbercraft images are going to be on our website, right after I was just told by Doug he all-of-the-sudden no longer wanted to partner. Within those few minutes/hours, how would I have the time to remove everything that quickly? It was a very strange and unfair accusation in such an outrageously short amount of time.

The attorney even had the audacity to tell me that we we’re infringing upon Timbercraft’s trademark. A quick search on USPTO.gov revealed that Timbercraft doesn’t actually even have a registered US trademark and there are multiple companies across the US that use the name Timbercraft. (You can view the Everywhere registered US trademark here.)

As crazy and silly as the whole situation was, I told Doug I didn’t want any trouble. We would just do our own thing.

After wanting to be a partner with Timbercraft for so long, I quickly realized that parting ways like this would be a blessing for my benefit. I told Doug I would spend the time needed to create our own unique tiny home models and also to remove anything and everything related to Timbercraft from our website. To make matters worse, Doug had to call us out and make a fool of ourselves online by posting this. He couldn’t just leave it and walk away. He had to take it the the next level and “act” like there never was any partnership and we made the whole thing up.

Our mission would go on. It was too important. And my passion to give others the same experience that I’ve had being out on the road, waking up in a new place every week or month is something I am going to be working towards until I can make it happen.

Out of all the many lessons I’ve learned since starting Everywhere, the most important one is to never give up. If you’re doing something great, people are going to attack you. People are going to get weird and do things and act like you never thought they would. We’ve had issues with general contractors, suppliers and vendors and everything in between. If you’re building something worthwhile it’s going to be difficult. But always find a way to keep pushing forward no matter what.

Even though Timbercraft basically knew that we had everything riding on this partnership with them and we had no other options, we pushed forward and continued to fight because of the mission we believe in. Regardless of whether or not Doug from Timbercraft decides to remove the post or not, we will continue to keep persisting and moving towards our goals and standing up to people like this that are out to attack us because they know of our potential.